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Panera Bread on Friday will host the grand opening of its latest location on State Street in Santa Barbara.

The restaurant, at 700 State St., held a soft opening Thursday in renovated space that had been vacant for a number of years after the closure of the Left at Albuquerque restaurant.

Panera Bread, which has another location at 3851 State St., had planned to open in January but instead spent eight months renovating and seeking proper permits, according to general manager Matt Vines.

“Basically everything has been replaced except the exterior wall,” Vines told Noozhawk. “It’s a neat location. The people in Santa Barbara love us.”

The clinic relocated from 2921 De la Vina St. to the downtown spot next door to REI last month.

The clinic will host an open house at the new location, which has convenient and ample free parking, from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 6. The event will feature live music, raffle prizes, food and drinks.

“I love the feel and openness of the new location,” Riley O’Hagan, doctor of physical therapy, said in a news release. “The space has been custom built to optimize the specialized care that we are known for.”

Hertz to Open New Santa Barbara Location

Hertz Corporation has leased retail space for a new location to serve Santa Barbara at 16 S. La Cumbre Road, adjacent to the Five Points Shopping Center.

Greenspan’s new company, Zodiac805, provides marketing assistance to other companies by monitoring online customer comments. Click here to check out its website.

Unite to Light Promotes New Technology

Santa Barbara nonprofit Unite to Light Inc. aims to raise more funds to develop a new product that uses solar technology to charge technological devices.

Using a new social media crowd fundraising platform called Indiegogo, Unite to Light hopes to raise awareness and funding for the new technology that includes a solar reading light with a USB port that will charge a cell phone or an e-reader.

In a pilot project with World Reader, Unite to Light has partnered with a small village in Kenya and will be providing refurbished Kindles loaded with African and English books.

The new unit, called UTL-C (Charger unit), could be placed in the sun during the day, and then used to charge devices at night. The first product developed at the Institute for Energy Efficiency at UC Santa Barbara in 2010 is a four-ounce, rechargeable solar light with a high efficiency LED.

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Here’s how it works: You share your questions with us in the nearby box. In some cases, we may work with you to find the answers. In others, we may ask you to vote on your top choices to help us narrow the scope. And we’ll be regularly asking you for your feedback on a specific issue or topic.

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The results of our investigation will be published here in this Noozhawk Asks section. Once or twice a month, we plan to do a review of what was asked and answered.

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